


Winner

by rathernotmyname



Series: Fictober! 2020 [4]
Category: Night at the Museum (Movies)
Genre: Ahkmenrah is cute and clueless, Fictober! Day 4, Fluff, Gen, Imagine that, located somewhere between NatM 1 and 2, museum shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-10
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:29:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27993042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rathernotmyname/pseuds/rathernotmyname
Summary: A new game is invented in the museum, and Nicky would really like to just do his homework for once.
Relationships: Ahkmenrah & Nick Daley
Series: Fictober! 2020 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2050200
Kudos: 22





	Winner

**Author's Note:**

> Author's note:  
> I DO NOT CONSENT TO MY WORK BEING HOSTED OR REPOSTED ON ANY UNOFFICIAL APPS OR WEBSITES OTHER THAN ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN WITHOUT MY APPROVAL, PARTICULARLY APPS WITH AD REVENUE AND SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES.

A high-pitched scream echoes through the long hallway.

“Dexter, give that back right now!”

The cheeky monkey shoots down the hallway like a fired bullet, cackling not unlike their newest exhibitions, two kookaburras named Hans and Heinrich. 

Nicky flies around the corner, waving his hands and almost tripping on the slippery floor. 

“That’s my homework, you sneaky little—”

A sudden obstacle on the floor makes him fall, sliding a few meters before coming to an uncomfortable halt before a fake potted plant. Dexter scampers out of sight, chittering in victory, politics homework clutched in one paw.

“Aw, man,” Nicky whines, before turning around to look at what he stumbled over.

It’s a ball. A small, fist-sized, multicolored ball, bearing much similarity to the juggling balls his dad had lying around from his brief time of jobbing as a clown at the local fair (Nicky hadn’t ever been so embarrassed for someone else). He looks up to the junction box on the wall, which Dexter had used as a launching pad. Why were his dad’s juggling balls lying around on the museum’s junction boxes?

After wracking his mind for any possible reasons, Nicky shrugs and puts the ball into the pocket of his sweater. He’d just take it home. No need for it to get dusty if you could play a nasty soccer game with it, right?

On his way back to the lobby he comes across a porcupine with a Roman on it’s back. Nicky doesn’t know him, but he greets him anyway and asks him what he’s up to.

“I’m on a mission, my boy,” the Roman explains proudly, tightening the strap that holds the helmet on his head when the porcupine waddles over to sniff at Nicky’s shoe. 

“Well, I won’t bother you then,” Nicky answers and regrets it immediately when the Roman bids him farewell without telling him what his mission is. Bugger. He’d have loved to know. Well, he does have his own mission: finding his homework, because he doesn’t figure that his teacher will believe him when he tells her that a plastic monkey stole it.

With a sigh too weary for his age, he enters the lobby to get Sac or Teddy to convince Dexter to give him the sheets back. 

The sight that greets him makes him regret not asking the Roman even more. 

Every exhibition he sets his eyes on is either crawling around on the floor, looking under furniture and turning every piece of dirt they can find, or standing on tiptoes and even on each other’s backs to take looks behind fire extinguishers, plants and signs. 

Nicky blinks, and then blinks again. His confusion does not leave. Resigned, he approaches the front desk, where two Huns and Jed and Octavius have taken refuge. 

“Do I want to know what’s going on? Are they on a pre-seasonal Easter hunt?” he asks, pointedly ignoring the Civil War dummy crawling up the globe behind him. 

“We are playing a game, my liege,” Octavius informs him, and Jed nods enthusiastically. 

“Ya missed all the action, buddy!” he exclaims, throwing his hands in the air in mock-exasperation. 

“Sorry,” Nicky grumbles, “I was doing homework. I’m not in the mood for games, anyway.” He doesn’t even know where his sudden bad mood comes from, but maybe it’s just the fact that the people in front and around him will never ever have to worry about stuff like homework. It’s enviable. 

“Oh,” Octavius says, and Nicky can’t help but feel a little regret at their visible disappointment. 

He tries to save the situation with a great joke his dad read in the newspaper today, and after he has explained the context for 20 minutes, the Huns are crying tears from laughter and Jed and Octavius are rolling on the desk, gasping and guffawing. 

A flash of gold catches Nicky’s eye, and he bids the victims of his wonderful pun farewell and runs into the direction of utter regality, as Teddy had joked once when poor Ahkmenrah had come down with a cold. 

“Hey, Ahk!” he greets him, and is met with a dazzling smile. 

Sacajawea had said once that the exhibits didn’t need the sun as long as Ahk was smiling like that, and Ahk’s face had flushed a very dark red. Nicky likes to think back on that moment.

“Hello Nicky, son of the Guardian,” Ahk says formally, bowing his head in greeting. 

Nicky forgoes the formalities and wraps his arms around him in a vigorous hug. 

“Stop it, that tickles!” 

Nicky lets go, but not before Ahk can squeeze him back, brown arms wrapped around Nicky’s small shoulders.

“So tell me, Nicky, what are you doing this wonderful night?” 

They leave the lobby and turn down the hallway to the ocean exhibit. The whale is always down for company, and they don’t mind if they just so happen to get a stream of water into the face. It has been the source of a lot of insiders between them, even if Ahk doesn’t know what the word means.

“Well, I was actually gonna do my homework for once, but Dexter ran away with it. Could you maybe…”

“I’m afraid not, Nicky,” Ahk says apologetically. “I fear Dexter and I had a… disagreement this evening regarding my bandages. He is dreadfully affronted about not being allowed to make a nest out of them in his favorite tree.” 

Ahk’s gentle, accented voice washes over Nicky like a soothing wave, and he finds himself a lot less irritable than before. 

“That sucks,” he tells him with vigor. At Ahk’s confused expression, he clarifies: “That’s inconvenient.”

“Indeed.”

They are not greeted with a wave of cold water as they enter the ocean exhibit, as the whale is occupied with watching a movie Larry put on for him on the giant screen in the back of the room. It’s a documentary of space and meteors, to their shared amusement.

The whale looks very astonished, in any case.

“It seems he is a little – how do you say it – out of his element?” Ahk whispers.

Nicky bursts out laughing. 

They settle down in the comfortable, brand-new cinema seats. His dad had said that McPhee had had a fit about them staying clean, even employing a new janitor only for this one room. 

“Hey, Ahk,” Nicky begins when the theme music for the next episode starts, “what is this game everyone is playing? How’d that happen?”

“Well, Lewis and Clark had a fight about where they had left various equipment,” Ahk recounts, eyebrows rising in his trademarked expression of lingering disbelief and exasperation. 

“Clark accused Lewis of taking away some of his food, and Lewis claimed that Clark wouldn’t even notice if some of his things went missing. Then they started deliberately hiding the other’s personal belongings, in which case I still can’t think of a reason they would think this was a good idea, and started to involve other exhibits in the search.”

Nicky whistles lowly. “Wow, I missed a lot. What happened next?”

Ahk shrugs. “Our ever faithful Guardian figured out what was going on very quickly and set a few boundaries when I came to him about finding a foreign toothbrush in my sarcophagus.”

Nicky snorts, unable to hide his mirth. 

Ahk sends him a snide glance, but his lips curve up into a smirk as well. 

“Your father ordered all belongings to be found and put back where they belonged, but he and Teddy noticed how much fun some of us seemed to have while searching. There were a few bets placed about finding a certain piece of underwear, and I’ve heard the sentence ‘I won’ more often in this week than in my entire life. Which is a considerably long time, if I may remind you.”

Nicky snorts again and pats Ahk’s shoulder in sympathy. His brain slowly pieces the events together.

“So when everything was found, dad basically made all of you do an Easter hunt for random items?”

Ahk rocks his head from side to side, carefully to not upset his crown (or Chent, as Ahk told him it’s called. Or was it Tchen?)

“Almost.” (Pschent! That was the word!)

Ahk tugs his cloak absentmindedly to cover his bare stomach. He must be cold, Nicky thinks, and scoots a little closer to offer warmth, which Ahk accepts with a beaming smile.

“He brought three of these strange, heavy little balls from his home.”

A sinking feeling builds in Nicky’s chest.

“They are easy to see because of their unusual color, but also easy to hide because of their small size. He hid them one night, and the ones who find them have, as far as the definition allows it, won. So far, we’ve found two of three.”

The sinking feeling intensifies. The pocket of his sweater seems to weigh a lot heavier than a few seconds ago. 

“Ah, erm…”

Ahk turns in his seat so he can meet Nicky’s eyes. 

“What is the matter?” he asks, worry written on his face. 

“Well, thing is…” Nicky swallows and reaches into his pocket, producing the little juggling ball. “Do the balls happen to look like this one?”

“They do,” Ahk says astonishedly. He takes the ball from Nicky’s palm and turns it in his hands in stunned silence. Then: “Where did you find it?”

“I didn’t really find it, Dexter did. It was lying on a junction box in the hallway leading to the Neanderthals.”

“Huh,” Ahk says. 

He lightly throws the ball from one hand to the other. 

“Nobody’s gotta know,” Nicky blurts suddenly. “I’m not gonna tell. And technically, you did find it in my pocket. I wasn’t playing, anyway.”

“Are you certain?” Ahk asks, laying one affectionate hand on Nicky’s shoulder.

“Pinky-promise,” Nicky answers, and shows Ahk his outstretched pinky finger. 

Ahk, who doesn’t quite know what to do with the offered pinky, gives Nicky an awkward pinky finger high-five and rolls the ball in his hands some more while Nicky snickers about the newly invented vow-method. 

“I am forever in your debt,” Ahk says finally, bowing deeply before Nicky before sprinting to the lobby.

The next morning, Nicky smiles on the bus to school, without his politics homework but with Ahk’s loud jubilant cheers of ‘I win! I win! I win!’ still ringing in his mind.

**Author's Note:**

> My first NatM fic! I liked playing around with the characters a bit, and while I feel like I didn't really nail Ahkmenrah's character, it was still fun to write it.  
> (Documentation speaker voice) Nicky never got his homework back. Dexter ate it or something.  
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
